Damage Control

In this excellent stand-alone from Hamilton (The Last Embrace), 33-year-old Maggie Silver works for "the top crisis management firm in L.A.," which represents movie stars and famous athletes and makes sure the client's version of a story gets told every time, and if that means burrowing for "new facts," so be it. With a mortgage to pay and an ill mother to support, Maggie can't afford to be too picky about her clients, and is willing to suppress personal qualms when her latest turns out to be Senator Henry Paxton, who's also the father of her estranged best friend from high school, Anabelle. The murder of Paxton's beautiful 23-year-old aide could put the senator's career at risk. As Maggie reconnects with Anabelle in the course of trying to contain the damage, she finds it difficult to separate the personal from the professional. The reappearance of old ghosts from Maggie's teenage years doesn't help. The suspenseful denouement should please Hamilton fans. (Sept.)